Author: Blancer

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently awarded Apple with 18 fresh patents according to documents released by the government agency this week. Among the 18 new patents, one specifically addresses the design of the iPhone 4.

In the newly granted patent, filed by Apple in September, 2010, the Cupertino company details its flagship mobile device in words and illustrations. The patent covers “the ornamental design for an electronic device with graphical user interface” and depicts the distinctive, minimalist industrial design of the iPhone 4, including the infamous stainless steel antenna that loops around its outer edge. The USPTO also furnished Apple with a similar design patent for the iPod touch released in 2007, patents for iTunes and Apple TV, and a technical patent for a touch display with integrated RFID components.

[via Engadget]

Continue reading Apple awarded iPhone 4 design patent

Apple awarded iPhone 4 design patent originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blue Microphones makes outstanding mics for musicians, podcasters and anyone else who needs to capture or transmit audio with great clarity and range. After using one of Blue’s Yeti USB mics at Macworld Expo 2010, I bought one to improve my audio on TUAW TV Live and the TUAW Talkcast. That same mic has also been used for recording voiceovers, screencasts and a commemorative video, and it never fails to amaze me just how good the sound quality is.

For many musicians, however, the Yeti just didn’t do the job since it only had a USB connection. Now Blue has updated the Yeti with a new model, unsurprisingly called the Yeti Pro ($249.95 suggested retail price, available for less through some online sources). The Pro will make audio professionals happy, as it adds analog XLR output, an A-D converter chip, and a separate analog circuit path so it can be used with pro mixers and preamps.

As with the existing Yeti, the Yeti Pro can be used in both studio and desktop environments. The four-position pattern selector knob is still on the mic’s tubular body, providing a way to switch between stereo, cardioid, omnidirectional, and bidirectional pickup patterns. There’s still a mute button, gain control, and volume knob, and the base still has a standard threaded mic stand mount.

Continue reading New Blue Yeti Pro Mic stalking audio enthusiasts

New Blue Yeti Pro Mic stalking audio enthusiasts originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Japanese newspaper report suggests Apple has chosen Toshiba as the sole supplier of its LCD displays for the iPhone. Earlier this year, a circulating rumor suggested Apple had invested US$1.2 billion in a Sharp-owned LCD production plant. The plant would go online in 2012 and provide Apple with an near-exhaustive supply of displays for its mobile devices. This latest report from Japan claims Apple has backed out of this venture, possibly due to an earthquake related disruption in Sharp’s production.

Instead of Sharp, Apple has reportedly turned to Toshiba for its LCD displays. An earlier rumor suggested Apple was also investing US$1 billion in a Toshiba-owned LCD plant, but Toshiba later denied the rumor.

Sharp denies this current rumor claiming the Japanese report “contradicts the facts.” One thing is for sure — Apple has a large paper trail of money that is difficult follow as it secures an ample source of components to meet the growing demand for its mobile products.

[Via AppleInsider]

Japanese newspaper reports Apple picked Toshiba as sole LCD supplier originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It always pays to be patient.

While the iPad 2 had wait times of 4 to 5 weeks at launch, the devices are now shipping in 1 to 2 weeks from the U.S. online store. The ship times are consistent across all models, whether black, white, Verizon, AT&T, or with different storage capacities.

The new shipping times could be due to lower demand, but considering that it is still difficult to purchase an iPad 2 at many Apple Stores, the cause is probably Apple clearing up any production issues.

The new shipping estimates are not only showing up in the American Apple online store, but in Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia online stores as well. European countries are still showing 2 to 3 week estimates, but it’s likely that the shipping times will decrease for the European and Asian markets as well.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

iPad 2 now shipping in 1 to 2 weeks from online stores originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Film Critic Roger Ebert has been a long time Mac fan, and now he is depending on his Mac laptop to speak for him. Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002, and it was later discovered there was additional cancerous material in his jaw. His lower jaw was removed, and Ebert lost his ability to eat and speak.

Now, Ebert uses the Alex voice, which is built into Mac OS X. Last month, with the help of his wife and some friends, Ebert talked about using the Mac to get his voice back in a TED talk. Note: the video uses Flash and is embedded on the next page.

It’s an inspiring session. Ebert has refused all further treatment for his cancer, and is willing to face whatever comes.

Continue reading Macs help Roger Ebert to speak again

Macs help Roger Ebert to speak again originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AOL has released an iPhone app for its Patch news sites. Patch.com offers hyperlocal news for more than 800 towns across America. Each location has one editor and uses a collection of freelance writers to report the news.

The idea behind Patch and other hyperlocal sites is that resident editors and writers can fill the void left by cash-strapped local newspapers, which, thanks to declining staff, no longer have the funds to cover all of the latest stuff in town.

Want to know the score of the high school football game? Patch can tell you that. Looking forward to that all-you-can-eat buffet bar opening? Patch has all the deets about the dessert items on the menu. For example, I grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, where absolutely nothing happens. Ever. But opening up my Patch app right now, I can see that the Borders on Manchester Road just sold its last book this weekend. Yeah, that’s not as exciting as what goes on here in London, but at the same time, it’s incredibly cool that I can get such hyperlocal news from my hometown — and now I can get it right on my iPhone.

The Patch app, released this week, features a handy dashboard screen that gives you quick access to your local weather, news, events and a directory of local businesses. It also offers a “Front 5” feature, which is a collection of the most relevant hyperlocal stories of the day. The app has a well-designed UI, and more importantly, the whole Patch concept is a lot more useful now that I can access it on my iPhone while out and about.

Patch for iPhone is a free download and requires an iPhone 3GS or later.

[Shout out to my Ballwin hommies: The Patch app just told me the Easter Bunny is appearing at Chesterfield Mall every day this week from noon to 1 PM. Rock on.]

Disclaimer: AOL is the parent company of TUAW.

AOL’s Patch sites get iPhone app for hyperlocal news originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s a cool addition to the “iOS-devices-can-do-just-about-anything” list: using a US$0.99 app to turn your iPhone 4, iPad 2 or latest-generation iPod touch into a 3D scanner, replacing hundreds of dollars worth of last year’s technology.

Trimensional was developed by Grant Schindler, a research scientist in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. It uses the device’s screen to light the object being scanned from four different directions, allowing a 3D model to be produced. Originally, users could only email their scans or send 3D animations, but now Schindler has added an in-app upgrade for a few dollars that allows you to export the data to CAD programs or 3D applications.

“You can just have fun with it, or if you work with 3D models, you can use it professionally,” Schindler said. You won’t get the same precision results you’d expect from a professional 3D scanner, but then again, it is less than a dollar. Check out some of the images of creations that users have already produced. Cool.

[Via Slashdot]

3D scanner app captures models using iPhone camera originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I was looking forward to combining today’s Apple Second Quarter 2011 Results Conference Call and TUAW TV Live into one incredible show — until it was pointed out that I’d need Apple’s prior approval to do so. As a result, TUAW TV Live is going to be kicking off two hours early at 3 PM EDT (Noon PDT) today, and we’ll be hosting a liveblog for the financial call at 5 PM EDT.

Part of the show will be a look at the prognostications of Wall Street on what we’ll probably hear from Apple today, while the rest of the hour will be dedicated to a discussion of this week’s Apple news and what’s new in the world of Apple hardware and software.

I’ll still be using our regular Ustream tools this week for the broadcast. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you’re unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in your iTunes or your other favorite podcatching app.

TUAW TV Live: A special early edition at 3 PM EDT today originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Guardian reports that independent researchers Pete Warden, a former Apple employee, and Alasdair Allan, a data visualisation scientist, announced today at Where 2.0 that they’ve explored a file hidden inside iOS backups which appears to track the location of the device going back as far as the installation of iOS4. [The first indications of location data in this file were actually brought up some time ago, but with substantially less fanfare. -Ed.]

The above map shows data taken from a test iPhone, and shows a detailed history of the phone’s movements around the south of England. Warden and Allan have put up a page with a FAQ discussing their findings and an Open Source software tool you can run on your own backups to see what you iPhone knows about you. They’ve also published a video demonstrating the problem.

Particularly worrying is that this file is unencrypted on the device (and on your Mac or PC, unless you encrypt your iTunes backups) and so easily accessible by anyone with access to your computer’s iTunes backups folder or with jailbreak access to your device. Because of the way iTunes handles backup-and-restore, the data will even automatically persist across devices if you replace your iPhone.

Continue reading Your iPhone is silently and constantly logging your location

Your iPhone is silently and constantly logging your location originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gary Katz is at it again, this time gutting an old iBook and turning it into an iPad case. To create this one-of-a-kind case, Katz gutted the body of the iBook, then used a Dremel to remove anything left inside that was sharp or could put pressure on the iPad’s glass screen. Next he fastened some “soft fuzzy material” inside to line the case and removed the opaque Apple logo so that you could see the iPad’s screen through it. As you can see from the video below, the Apple logo’s space can be quite a head trip in this case if you leave something running on the iPad’s screen.

Sure, it might be a lot of work for an iPad case, but you can bet this has to be one of the stronger cases out there. Those old iBooks were built like bomb shelters. I literally dropped a 5-pound weight on mine one time, and there was hardly any damage to it, just a black smudge from the weight. Katz has made some other pretty cool Mac-related mods in the past, including this “antique” iPad case and this iPhone shoe box theater.

Have an old iBook? Turn it into an iPad case originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xsan integrator Meta Media has an interesting series of posts on its Empowering Creativity blog about what it sees as the future — or rather the lack of a future — for Apple’s Mac Pro line.

The arrival of the Thunderbolt interface, Meta Media says, will allow Apple to return to its beloved sealed-box model of computer production with no user-serviceable parts inside, just like the original Macintosh. No expansion cards, no hard disk upgrades, just Thunderbolt (aka Light Peak) interfaces to connect … well, to connect anything you like really.

“The new Mac Pro will probably look something akin to the current Mac Mini, except slightly taller, more powerful, and with Thunderbolt ports,” the thinking goes. “In fact, all of us need to grapple with the prospect of a Mac product line without any capability of expansion beyond USB, Firewire and Thunderbolt.”

The latest MacBook Pros were the first to sport Thunderbolt connectors, and Meta Media argues that the rest of the Mac lineup will follow. The post points to the arrival of devices such as Promise’s SANLink Thunderbolt to dual-port, 4 Gigabit Fiber Channel adapter as heralding this change; the post forecasts that this is just the start.

“This means that at any time now, Apple can pull the plug on the current Mac Pro and not shock an entire industry. Add to that the near-production offerings of Thunderbolt-driven capture devices from AJA, Blackmagic Design, Matrox and MOTU, and we have our new-age video workstation clearly in sight,” Meta Media says.

You’ll find the blog posts here, here, here and here — have a read and let us know what you think. Would you be sad to see the Mac Pro range disappear into a giant Mac mini case? Will you be happy just plugging everything into Thunderbolt ports? Let us know in the comments.

Does Thunderbolt fortell the end of the line for the Mac Pro as we know it? originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T announced its first quarterly earnings for 2011 and sales of the iPhone 4 remain strong. According to the earnings statement, AT&T activated 3.6 million iPhones in the quarter ending March 31. This is a one million year over year increase and a slight drop from the 4.1 million activated in Q4 2010. Overall, AT&T added two million new subscribers to climb to 97.5 million total subscribers. This figure is also down from the 2.8 million subscribers AT&T added in the closing quarter of 2010.

These sales numbers were recorded in the same quarter Verizon Wireless launched its version of the iPhone 4. Despite predictions the Verizon iPhone would lead to a mass exodus from AT&T, the wireless carrier confirmed that iPhone churn remained the same year over year. In fact, about 23 percent of iPhone buyers in Q1 were new to AT&T. Apple reports it quarterly earnings today at 5 p.m. ET and Verizon reports its earnings tomorrow. It will be interesting to see where the remaining iPhone numbers fall.

AT&T iPhone sales unaffected by Verizon launch originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Future Games of London, makers of the popular Pool Bar – Online Hustle and (my favorite) Hungry Shark games, have just released Snooker Club for iOS. For those of you who don’t know, snooker is a pool-like game popular in Commonwealth countries. You play it on a 12-foot table with 22 balls. The person who pots the most balls wins the frame (individual game). The person who wins the most frames wins the game.

In most billiards halls, you’ll find groups of old men huddled around the snooker table, but FGOL has done away with the geezers and populated the Snooker Club, and you can play as one of seven beautiful women. You can play vs the computer or against a friend using two-player mode.

Like Pool Bar before this, Snooker Club features beautiful graphics with fluid camera controls and great ball physics. Best of all, the game is free for a limited time. Snooker Club is a universal app and requires iOS 4.1 or later.

Pool fans should check out Snooker Club for iPhone and iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a few weeks after FileMaker released new Starter Solutions for its FileMaker Go app, the mobile app itself has been updated to version 1.2. The update includes the following:

• Support for FileMaker Charts, including bar, area, line and pie charts
• Digital signatures on iPhone and iPad
• AirPrint integration
• Enhanced PDF creation

FileMaker Go for the iPhone is US$19.99, and the iPad version is $39.99 and works with all versions of FileMaker from 7 on. Both versions require iOS 4.2.1 or later. Check out our review of FileMaker Go to get an initial impression of the software.

FileMaker Go for iOS updated with charts, signatures and AirPrint originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Treat this one as pure speculation, because frankly, that’s what it is. A “high-ranking official” at Samsung let slip that the company is “planning to release a 2GHz dual-core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year.” This means that Samsung, one of the world’s biggest chip manufacturers and a significant Apple supplier, will be pushing out a new, likely ARM-based, 2GHz dual-core processor in the near future.

The speculation is that, since Samsung manufactures Apple’s A4 and A5 processors, which power the current crop of iDevices (regardless of present litigation), there’s potential for a new Apple-branded processor — the A6 if you like — based on the 2GHz dual-core chip. The current Cortex-A9-based Apple A5 sports a dual-core 1GHz configuration, so frankly, a 2GHz variant isn’t too much of a stretch, but who knows. The iPad 2 clips along at a lightning pace with its current A5; an iPad 3 sporting a dual-core 2GHz chip that has “the data processing capabilities of a regular PC, ” is mighty enticing. Just don’t mention battery life.

[via Yahoo! News]

Tenuous rumor pegs iPad 3 CPU as a dual-core 2GHz part originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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